It would be interesting to see how many people are employed in various jobs and see what proportion are likely to be unnecessary in the near future; e.g. line cooks in fast food may be unnecessary (though I haven't seen anything to indicate that we're even close to that yet), but how many jobs does that represent? Are most line cooks employed at fast food chains, or are they employed at non-chain restaurants? And has that not happened to a large degree already with prep happening at central locations for many chains?
Same goes for self-serve kiosks; McDonalds has already started using them, but they're clearly not going to take over at any restaurant that has a waiter.
Maybe the lower prices enabled by automation will drive non-automated competitors out of the market such that restaurants with waiters will simply go out of business and be replaced by efficient chains, but that sort of goes against the human desire for variety. But maybe it will siphon off enough people that many restaurants that are barely scraping buy have to close.
I guess we'll see how things progress, but I feel like our current ability to do NLP & fine robotic movement is still too limited to displace a lot of humans. That and people's preference for interacting with other humans.
Feels like arguing with the tide.
He's got a viewpoint, and no interest in changing it.
As you say, there have been multiple points in history where technological innovation obliterated the livelihood of whole categories of people, from dock workers to sailors to drivers.
Now, automated driving isn't in the "changes everything" category, no more than Diesel engines and containerisation changed everything. Yes, there are still areas which are feeling the impact from this change 50 years ago, but for the most part people moved on into other industries - the service industry in particular.
The thing is, the service industry is being eaten by automation. That does change everything, as without radical change there is not a further category of job for un or semi-skilled labour.
Within the current framework, UBI seems like a sane solution, although finding a way for people to be productive in a way that technology cannot and never can do better would be preferable. The thing is, I'm not certain there is any such thing even in the medium term - even creative and analytic skills are being assumed by AI. Not everybody can be a developer. Even developers will likely be substantially obsolete at some point - we are already at the point where silicon designs silicon with human intervention.
This is no small part of what's troubling the world right now - we have swathes of underemployment like we haven't seen before, and it shows in malcontentedness in the political process.
The other solution of course is to have a hell of a lot fewer humans, but that's unpalatable in terms of implementation.
It's interesting watching the economy contort in on itself in ever decreasing circles of mutation - it's something like Malthusian collapse, as we consume the available pool of productive purposes, leaving a hollowed out civilisation behind.